• user_6282638282@sopuli.xyz
    8 hours

    I have a BC-250 and it is so far in the opposite direction of what the Steam Machine is offering. It’s weird to me they’re being compared…

    It’s a fun DIY hobby project, but if I ever get the chance at a SM, I’ll buy it because plug and play is valuable to me and this is the exact opposite of that.

    • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4 hours

      I looked into this when the SM price tag was shown because it seemed like a much cheaper alternative for essentially the same power, but the effort to build one and the quirks it’ll always have (like sleep mode) pushed me away from it.

      Super cool to see as a hobby project, but they’re wildly different things.

    • yuri@pawb.social
      6 hours

      i’d love to hear you elaborate on that! i have a SM and i’m about to put together a BC-250 build.

      • user_6282638282@sopuli.xyz
        4 hours

        First thing is the power envelope and cooling requirements. The stock cooler is just so customized for server rack there aren’t really any good no-compromise quiet and cool solutions.

        Second is just a lot of software tweaking. While the community has done a lot of really impressive things… they’re also vibe coding a lot of this stuff. It changes often and it’s hard to tell what the code is doing.

        Finally is the sleep mode: there is none. You either leave it on all the time (I’ve dealt with Bazzite crashing in this case), or you boot and shutdown every time. Also no power control via controller or HDMI-CEC. (Without serious hacking)

        Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a fun side project while I languish on the infinite waitlist. If you have a 3D printer, it’s a good opportunity to utilize that. But the end result, even if you go full AIO cooling + soldering ESP32 power control boards, you won’t have that plug-and-play, set and forget SteamOS experience.

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7 hours

    Has anybody done this with a PS4 and have results to share? I know it’s possible, but I’m curious how feasible the PS4 is for a normal server workload. It seems like that could be a good way to repurpose last-gen gaming hardware that people will eventually be getting rid of in bulk.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    11 hours

    I really hope there will be an easy way to do the same with real PS5 in the future.